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Latest fed info shows oil drilling is big in Utica shale

Have prospectors struck oil in Ohio?
That's the question posed by this story on MidwestEnergyNews.com, based on the latest Energy Information Administration report on drilling in the state.
Drawing on drilling rig activity reports published by Baker Hughes Inc., EIA said in a “Today in Energy” mini-report last week “that there were twice as many active rigs in Ohio's Utica oil and gas play at the end of October than a year ago,” MidwestEnergyNews.com reports.
The big difference was oil exploration.
“The growth in active oil-directed rigs has more than offset the declines in active gas-directed rigs. According to Baker Hughes, about 86 percent, or 24 out of 28 active rigs in the Utica play, were directed toward drilling for shale oil,” the EIA stated. A year ago, about 15% were looking for shale oil in the state.
The story characterizes the numbers as “a head-scratcher for Ohio's reborn energy sector,” since the “mother lode in eastern Ohio is believed to be natural gas of the 'wet' kind, in which methane pipeline gas is spiked with valuable natural gas liquids — ethane, propane and butane.”
Aubrey McClendon, CEO of Chesapeake Energy Corp., the biggest player in the Utica shale, said this month it is not a place “where we are going to probably see a huge amount of oil production growth,” according to the story. He added, “And to the extent the oil works, it will be with some other companies,” according to news reports of his remarks at an energy conference.
But another executive speaking at the same conference in Pittsburgh disagreed, MidwestEnergyNews.com reports.
“I suspect that in Ohio, once we get the right completion method, we will have oil wells flowing,” said John Walker, president and CEO of Houston-based EnerVest.

Getting in gear

The new chief of the energy division at Huntington Bancshares Inc. is preparing to go all in on Ohio's growing oil and gas industry.
Stephen Hoffman tells Columbus Business First that he plans to spend the next year “knocking on doors” and assembling a team of experienced lenders to the industry.
“I would envision by the end of 2013 a team of about five or six on the business development and underwriting,” he says. “They would have some energy lending background. It's a very specific and specialized industry. ... You can get lost in it. I think it really requires some expertise.”
The newspaper says Mr. Hoffman has been working with energy and natural resource companies for two decades. He left his post as managing director at Bank of America Corp. to take the Huntington job.
Columbus Business First says Huntington is facing fresh competition from Cincinnati-based Fifth Third Bancorp, which recently launched a similar team.

Energy for the modern world

An industrial packaging products company in Delaware, Ohio, has seen good results from challenging employees to develop more energy-efficient work habits.
BusinessManagementDaily.com reports that for about four months, 60 employees at Greif Inc. “participated on two teams that competed to identify energy wasters and control energy use at work.” To do so, the website says, they used “modlets” — monitors that reveal how much energy devices plugged into an electrical outlet are using and can automatically shut them off at pre-programmed times.
“That helped employees learn about 'phantom power,' the electricity that an appliance or computer uses even when it's turned off, and about how much energy they waste by failing to unplug or shut down electronics when they're not in use,” according to BusinessManagementDaily.com.
The website says the two teams “competed to save more energy and learn more about energy than the other, earning badges and points for participating in learning activities.” One activity, for instance, “encouraged participants to identify active and standby power states of the devices monitored by their modlets.”
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